I agree with Adam. Real-time chats about an event that is being streamed should be on the actual video stream, not on a different network.I would understand the separate feed if UStream didn’t provide the chat option – but they do. Why not simply encourage KYMN to open the chat stream and participate there? Especially for a public event. The point is to consolidate – not fragment – the audience (both those in the actual room and those there virtually via video stream). I would think that the Northfield city council eventually might want to explore ways of using that chat stream to include more citizens in its meetings, when appropriate.

Ruth, yes, I did see that UStream provided a chat feature, embeddable too, but I hadn’t used it and knew that I couldn’t be a moderator, as I didn’t decide to do a chat till the last minute.

After meeting with Jeff and Tim yesterday, we’re planning to do a test to see if the UStream embeddable chat can consolidate a single stream of chat messages across two or more sites, as that would give everyone an incentive to embed both the video and chat on their own sites, just like embedding a YouTube video.

Also, we’ve now added the KYMN live streaming audio to our upper left sidebar so visitors here can listen to KYMN while they mouse around Locally Grown.